Ocean & Environment
Exploring questions related to the West Cork Islands under the theme ocean & environment.
Eóin Heaney is the recipient of the Creative Places West Cork Islands Ocean and Environment Commission. An acclaimed Irish filmmaker renowned for his evocative storytelling and innovative cinematic techniques.
The commission will see Eóin undertake an 18-month residency across the seven inhabited West Cork islands: Dursey, Bere, Whiddy, Long, Heir, Sherkin and Oileán Chléire with his project entitled ‘FATHOMS TO FEET’.
‘FATHOMS TO FEET’ will be a socially engaged documentary project exploring the resilience and innovation of the West Cork Islands’ communities as they respond to pressing environmental challenges. The project will unfold as a series of island-specific vignettes, with each island exploring its unique environmental relationship and cultural traditions.
Through a process of community collaboration and creative co-design, the film will document how residents across the seven islands; Dursey, Bere, Whiddy, Long, Heir, Sherkin and Oileán Chléire, confront oceanic and environmental issues. By weaving local knowledge with open-source ecological methods, the project will highlight sustainable solutions for renewable energy, waste reduction, and the impacts of climate change on island life.
About the artist
Eóin sees film as an effective and inspiring means to categorize the world. FATHOMS TO FEET will be a socially engaged documentary project exploring the resilience and innovation of the West Cork Islands’ communities as they respond to pressing environmental challenges. Through a process of community collaboration and creative co-design, this film will document how residents across the seven islands confront oceanic and environmental issues. By weaving local knowledge with open-source ecological methods, the project will highlight sustainable solutions for renewable energy, waste reduction, and the impacts of climate change on island life.
The project will unfold as a series of island-specific vignettes, with each island co-creating a narrative that explores its unique environmental relationship and cultural traditions. Inspired by observational and participatory filmmaking techniques, the film will showcase community voices and intimate exchanges, inviting island residents to share their stories and techniques as they co-create environmentally responsible methods.
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Eóin Heaney is an award-winning filmmaker artist living and working in Dublin, Ireland. He studied film production in Ballyfermot College of Further Education, Dublin and his previous work has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Screen Ireland, CCI Paris, France and Germany’s FFF Bayern and the Berlinale Film Festival. Eóin’s films use formal cinematic grammar, time, and repetition to question our fragile relationship with identity, representation and lived reality. Eóin’s most recent work includes hybrid documentary PARISH, M/S, a film exploring illness and care that draws on his seventeen years’ experience as primary carer for his mother, and the multi-award winning experimental film SPIRIT LEVEL (an adaptation of Mycenae Lookout by poet Seamus Heaney).
Examples of topics and questions will include
Resilience of coastal communities and means by which island populations interact with land and sea in the context of the climate crisis
Does the climate crisis have an impact on contemporary island life and what would it mean for the islands when the facts of climate science materialise
Plastic (including microplastics and oceanic pollution)
Coastal erosion
Food, fishing, and farming
Renewable energy
Ocean & environmental ethics
Waste management, recycling, upcycling, and sustainability as a way of life on the islands
